2008 Winners

Best of the Fest

Inspired by legendary guitar player Hank Garland, Crazy is a story of musical genius, passion, and betrayal. Emerging from the Nashville in the 50’s, Hank had established his brilliant playing in country, rock and jazz. But his adversarial relationship with the Nashville Mob - those who controlled the music industry - caused him to be seen as a trouble maker.

From fighting for artist’s rights, to bringing black, jazz musicians into the restricted, southern music culture, Hank refused to compromise his pursuit for excellence.However, it may have been his tempestuous relationship with his beautiful but wife, Evelyn, which led to his final demise. After surviving a car crash, Hank was subjected to electro-shock treatments which tragically ended his career at the age of 31.

Feature Film Award

Fifteen years ago Raymond Colby claimed he was picked up and carried away by a giant bird, he was then committed to the Salt Creek County mental home. After fifteen years away from the small town Raymond finds himself struggling to convince his family and the local community that his "giant bird" attack was in fact real.

Avery Crounse Award

Struggling filmmaker Lee Kazimir reads some advice from Werner Herzog, who said that filmmakers should skip film school and instead ‘make a journey alone, on foot, for a distance of 5,000 kilometers, let’s say from Madrid to Kiev.’ Kazimir decides to take the advice literally, walking for six months and through seven countries from Madrid to Kiev while documenting the journey with a videocamera.Along the way he confronts physical struggles and meets a varied cast of characters on the road. He learns some essential lessons, realizing ultimately that ‘before Art, comes Life.’More Shoes is a diary picture that serves both as an account of an artistic coming-of-age and as a snail’s-eye portrait of Europe in the early 21st century.

This Gary Null, Ph.D. documentary challenges the assumption that vaccines are PERFECTLY safe. The use of heavy metals such as mercury, connections to autism and the high number of vaccines given at a very young age to children are among the arguments presented. The story chronicles the nightmare of parents who lost a child soon after a vaccination series and the father was sent to prison for murdering his child but was later released. Government cover-ups and deceptions with corruption in the scientific community are illustrated by those featured in Vaccine Nation

Six-hundred-five film clips are assembled and used to create a piece of electronic music. As the visual component appears in the center of the screen, the original analog audio is sent to the left channel while it is simultaneously converted into digital music data and sent to the right channel. The digital data is also transposed into traditional musical notation and displayed on the screen as it is converted. The film includes an animated ‘chalkboard’ introduction that explains the entire process.

Trading the Future is a video essay or hybrid documentary that questions the inevitability of apocalypse and its repercussions on environmental urgencies. Starting with a personal account addressing the Christian narrative for the end of times, the video draws connections to secular apocalypticism and questions our ready acceptance of a cataclysmic end. The video also challenges the philosophical and practical underpinnings of science and progress, the market place, and the symbolic of death while proposing possible alternatives in activism, biodiversity, and the idea of natality.

Honorable Mention

UNCOUNTED is an explosive documentary that shows how the election fraud that changed the outcome of the 2004 election led to even greater fraud in 2006 - and now looms as an unbridled threat to the outcome of the 2008 election. This controversial film examines in factual, logical, and yet startling terms how easy it is to change election outcomes and undermine election integrity across the U.S. Noted computer programmers, statisticians, journalists, and experienced election officials provide the irrefutable proof.